When I saw Dawn...

It was April 3rd, 2006 – just a day after “To be… ME” had been made ready to ‘come out’ to the world… along with ME!

Sometime in the afternoon, my cell phone beeped an SMS. It was to inform me that today was the birthday of a certain man, who had been very significant in my life in the past one month, so I called him up instantly. The restless man that he is, without even giving me sufficient time to wish him the best in life, he asked me where I was. And before I could begin to answer that, he informed me that I was going to The Oberoi's to have a cake with him!

And he was right! I was going to The Oberoi's after all… despite the fact that I was wearing virtually rags for clothes and some unmentionable Batas for footwear… and he was (is) at least a billionaire for sure. For our purposes, we’ll call him ‘A’!

I don’t remember much about The Oberoi's, I’m not someone who has an eye for architecture but I clearly remember feeling miniscule while entering it. I knew I didn’t belong there. Nor did I feel that I fit on the table of the man I was meeting, but there he was – with a genuine, warm smile spreading on his face, as soon as his eyes spotted me. It must have been then, that it crossed my mind that I had brought him no gift. But even if it had occurred to me sooner, I could have done nothing much to help myself. I was pretty much penniless.

He was in a business meeting with two other men. He left that table and we took another one a little distance away. He called for coffee (I didn’t like it one bit) and a chocolate pastry (I loved it) that we shared in the name of his birthday.

The coffee and cake, of course, came later. The conversation began much before that. Thanks to my recently developed grandma-ish memory (sigh!), I remember only the most important part of the conversation. And it had begun with – “So what’s your darkest desire?”

[Now that I think of it, I find it really funny. Darkest desire! I could have named a million and one to him, starting with something that had John Abraham and a lot of creative imagination in it!]

I had laughed and said – I don’t HAVE any dark desire. “Oh, come on!” – came the voice from the other side of the table – “Everyone has a dark desire. You have to tell me yours!” By any chance, if you happen to meet him, you will know what I mean when I say that if he needs something from you, he can really get after your life! And How!

But then, I am not less known for my obstinacy too! I didn’t budge from the lie – “I have no dark desires”. And then, he asked me THE question – “Have you ever loved someone?”

Finally, an easy question – “Yes”, I said.
“Do you want to marry him?”
“I don’t want to talk about it”
“See! That’s your darkest desire! The deepest! Lying inside the darkest cellar inside of you… Where you don’t allow even a whiff of light to peep in”
“ ”, I said.
“What’s stopping you? Why don’t you go ahead and be who you really are? Just why?”

I got no time to answer that. He was already punching his cell phone’s keypad, and within half a minute, he had fixed up a consultation appointment for me with a surgeon.

“I’ll pay for your entire SRS process. And then, you can direct a movie for me sometime. Fair deal?”

In that moment, on that day, in that year, in this lifetime, I couldn’t have asked for anything more than that. My roadblock had always been money, and it would have, for quite some time still. This man had changed it!

“So, transform into a pretty girl and marry the guy!”

[It would of course never be that simple, but it was this quality of this man that made him endearing – he made life look so simple. As if, everything is just a wish away!]

“I can’t marry him A. Come on! He has a family too. Even if I transform into a pretty girl and all that, it’s impossible. His family would never accept me!”

And then, he said golden words again…

“That’s HIS problem. Why’re you making it yours? You love the guy, if he loves you too, you get married. What his family thinks is not your problem. Don’t make it either!”

Even today, I try to keep the essence of what he meant etched in my mind and my day-to-day dealings with the world. If somebody has a problem with me… REALLY… it’s THEIR problem. It doesn’t work always, because it CAN’T work always, but I do give him credit for he made everything look so simple! Flawed, yet beautifully simple…

He was flawed too… Somewhere along the way, he withdrew from his ‘fair deal’, for reasons best known to him. By then, however, my parents had accepted my decision and they stood steady with me, even if it meant their bank balance being drained completely.

I feel incapable of putting in words what my parents have meant, and how much they have done for me, hence, I keep postponing it for future, for a time when I feel I just might be able to do a little fraction of justice to their love with my minor writing.

This piece, however, is to thank A – the man, who came into my life for a very short period of time, but who will always be remembered as the one who brought me LIFE… sooner than I would have imagined, or planned for myself!

That evening, when I came out of the Oberoi's, the sun was crimson. There were people strolling at the Marine Drive. I sat there for a while, a long while… feeling the breeze in my face and hair, saving that view in my memory for all times to come – the setting sun, the dusk, the skyline of Bombay, the Oberoi Hotel, the Marine Drive, every passerby – unaware witnesses of the Dawn in my life…